Winning friends and influencing people

You know, you keep invading a culture and bashing them as a bunch of extremists and having a perpetual "crusade" to fight what you call perpetual "jihad" and it's amazing how stuff just gets all complicated and works against you.

Welcome to Bush World:

Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials...

Khaled al-Anesi, an attorney for some of the Cole defendants, said Yemen had rushed to convict them. But he said he is still mystified by the government's subsequent handling of the case.

"There's something that doesn't smell right," he said. "It was all very strange. After these people were convicted in unfair trials, all of a sudden it was announced that they had escaped. And then the government announced they had surrendered, but we still don't know how they escaped or if they had help."

Hamoud al-Hitar, a former Supreme Court justice, said the trials were fair. But he suggested that the government had turned lenient because the Cole defendants had participated in a "dialogue and reconciliation program" designed to de-radicalize al-Qaeda members.

Hitar, who oversees the program, claimed that 98 percent of graduates have remained nonviolent. Asked about two Cole suspects who escaped and went to Iraq to become suicide bombers, Hitar shrugged. "Iraq was not part of the dialogue program," he said.

Disgusted yet?

It gets worse:

Relatives of the 17 sailors who died on the Cole said they are furious at Yemen for releasing the plotters. But they expressed equal disdain for their own government.

The families have fought for years to obtain information from the State, Defense and Justice departments about their inquiries into the attack. "We never really got anyplace," said Andrew C. Hall, an attorney for the relatives.

With few other options, family members filed a civil lawsuit in 2004 against the government of Sudan, alleging that it had provided support for al-Qaeda over the years and therefore was also liable for the Cole attack. Last July, a federal judge in Norfolk, Va., ruled in their favor and ordered Sudan to pay $7.96 million in damages. (Yemen could not be sued because, unlike Sudan, it is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.)

John P. Clodtfelter Jr. of Mechanicsville, Va., whose son Kenneth died on the Cole, said the families have tried to meet with Bush to press for more action.

"I was just flat told that he wouldn't meet with us," Clodtfelter said. "Before him, President Clinton promised we'd go out and get these people, and of course we never did. I'm sorry, but it's just like the lives of American servicemen aren't that important."

How dare these people question their government in a "TIME OF WAR"! Bush has no obligation to explain why he doesn't give two shits about anyone but Bush. [/sarcasm]

I'm sure a 3 minute Google search would be rife with your Malkins, Reynolds, Confederate Meathead, etc. going on and on about how Clinton didn't give a shit about the USS Cole, while the mighty Preznit goes uncriticized.

Well, it's been seven years, three months and two weeks and what has the Chimperor done but fuck in everything worse -- even alleged Clinton problems (the kind he had two months to deal with)?